Nvidia’s new GeForce GTS 250 isn’t really new at all. It’s the same GeForce GTX 9800+ that already took its share of licks in the press for centering on the same architecture as the GeForce 8800 GT. But it was a damn good architecture, which explains why it’s making yet another appearance under a “re-aligned†naming convention.
Besides, why should Nvidia have to design something completely new based on the large, expensive GT200, just to say it has a mainstream card that runs as fast as its old GTX 9800+? When AMD is able to usurp the G92 architecture at a more aggressive price point, Nvidia will be compelled to answer back, just as it did with massive price cuts when AMD shocked the market with its Radeon HD 4870 last year.
In the beginning there was the GeForce 8800 GT, and we were happy.
Then, we then got a faster version: the 8800 GTS 512MB. It was more expensive, but we were still happy.
And then it got complicated.
Our benchmarks highlight that NVIDIA's got its pricing just about right with the GeForce GTS 250, in both variants, and the entire range is backed up by the CUDA and Graphics Plus ecosystem that's made decent strides in the last year.
Overall, though, we're quite miffed that NVIDIA's chosen to re-brand an older card - GeForce 9800 GTX+ - as its standard-bearer for the mid-range through much of 2009, because that's what the GTS 250 is. There's no really new architecture here, and all the non-hardware improvements such as CUDA-driven apps apply to the older cards too. The technology enthusiast in us would have much preferred a cut-down version of the GTX 260, for better performance, but NVIDIA's chosen to drop price instead of really innovate.
Aces170 said:Hmm looking at TR's report the 1gb is kicking in at higher resolutions, many a times surpassing 4870 512mb, and Nvidia has managed to reduce the power draw by a good few watts.
In all a close call at 150USD, tilting slightly in favour of Nvidia due to the higher onboard memory. But you need to look performance at 1680*1050 which most ppl would be looking at, at that resolution its a tie.
sTALKEr said:which world have you been in morgoth
4870 AND 4850 have had price cuts!
WingZero said:hain??...wt was this about??.:S
Supra said:Best thing is though 130$ card is 10.5k in India , 150$ card is 12k .... we are touching almost new $ multipliers now :rofl:
$ goes from 49 to 52....distri multi goes from 70 to 80. More recession means less card sold leading to more profit per card. Jai Ho to Indian distris !!
Stuge said:thank for the links
TIme to read review![]()
Normally, you'd expect us to have a review of the card on launch day, but that is sadly something we haven't been allowed to do. Nvidia had remained uncharacteristically quiet - both on and off the record - about the GeForce GTS 250 for one reason or another and we didn't find out about the card until Tuesday last week.
On Thursday, we had a conference call and were essentially told in no uncertain terms that we wouldn't get a sample before launch. But why?
This is where things get a bit trickier because Nvidia palmed us off to the partners - it said that it wasn't sending out reference cards and they'd instead be coming from partners. What we found strange about this was that, typically, in the run up to a graphics card launch we receive anywhere between five and ten calls from add-in board partners, asking us to look at their new products.
We didn't receive a single call this time around.
Instead, we had to resort to making those calls ourselves and, to our surprise, the general consensus from partners was that they were prohibited from sending samples to bit-tech and Custom PC before launch.
Early last week Charlie over at The Inquirer posted a story saying that a number of reviewers were cut out of the GeForce GTS 250 launch. We felt a bit hurt, by the time the story launched we weren't even asked to be briefed about the GTS 250. Cards had already gone out to other reviewers but we weren't on any lists. Oh, pout.
Magically, a couple of days after Charlie's article we got invited to a NVIDIA briefing and we had a GTS 250 to test. Perhaps NVIDIA was simply uncharacteristically late in briefing us about a new GPU launch. Perhaps NVIDIA was afraid we'd point out that it was nothing more than a 9800 GTX+ that ran a little cooler. Or perhaps we haven't been positive enough about CUDA and PhysX and NVIDIA was trying to punish us.
Who knows what went on at NVIDIA prior to the launch, we're here to review the card, but for what it's worth - thank you Charlie![]()